Digital Citizens

On Wednesday Kelly, our superb media specialist, and I presented on web 2.0 tools (blogs, wikis, digg, scribd, flicker, twitter, youtube, facebook . . .) for our staff.

The first challenge was for teachers to create blogs. And how they have responded.

A few were skeptical and scared. Those we can deal with. A few more might have been obstinate.

Now the skepticism and fright, I can deal with. That's only natural. But the refusal to take part frustrates me.

It gets at how hypocritical we, as teachers, can be. I mean how often do we give our students assignments of which they are skeptical or scared? How do we react to that?

How often do they just plain refuse to do something? And how do we react to that?

It's no different when we have those hypocrites among us who choose to read the paper or blather on to whomever they are sitting next to when our district shells out money to bring in a speaker. Whether you agree or not with their message, at least take the chance to learn . . . we expect the same from our students.

Yet, how often do we as teachers truly learn?

Mrs. Devine was just blogging about how she was attending some professional development provided by her school district. But she makes a great point: she provides most of her own professional development.

Amen!

But how often do we all do that?

Coaches do a fine job of that, but what about teachers?

So I gave my little spiel about us having a wonderful opportunity to put ourselves in the role of our students and be unsure of ourselves and having to perform a task outside of our comfort zone - even if we think (and some teachers think believe blogs have no value to them - and they might not) it has nothing to offer us. Yet, how often do we hear our students say that? When will I ever use this geometry? When will I ever need to know about Mesopotamia? When will I ever need to know all the parts of speech (well, ha ha, you won't ever need to know that . . .)?

Luckily, many staff members have stepped up and acted as genuine learners and begun blogging. Can't wait to see them work their way through our 20 challenges.

Though I've been blogging for several years now, I'm learning new things ALL the time.

This web 2.0 exercise is a great example. One thing we learned about - thanks again to Kelly - is the power of iGoogle.


For those who are unfamiliar with it, iGoogle allows you - provided you have a Google id - to personalize a website around your interests. For example, my iGoogle page opens with a Halloween banner and has several gadgets and pages all designed or chosen by me. I have a facebook gadget that keeps me signed in to what is going on on my facebook account. I have an ESPN score gadget that will update the weekend football scores for me. There's a gadget set to this blog (in fact I'm blogging from my iGoogle page right now). I have a gadget for youtube, a gadget for upcoming horror films, a gadget listing the top stories from my favorite magazines, and on and on and on.

What this allows us to do is design how we want our world to look. In the past, I used to have to tune in to Sportscenter or Entertainment Tonight or some other show, just hoping that they might have a segment devoted to what I wanted to know more about. Otherwise, I had to come through the TV Guide insert that came with the Grand Forks Herald to see what would be on that week. And if I was gone, I was out of luck.

How our world has changed. Sites like iGoogle now caters just to us. And in a matter of an afternoon I can learn more about the things I genuinely love than I did in all of my years growing up watching TV, reading magazines, and scanning the library for books that might be interesting.

That's being a digital citizen.